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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24412606">Thistle Garden</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/tablet_twelve/pseuds/tablet_twelve'>tablet_twelve</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Little Women Series - Louisa May Alcott</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Coming Out, Genderqueer Character, Nonbinary Character, Other, Queer Themes, Trans, Trans Character</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 05:41:28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,032</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24412606</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/tablet_twelve/pseuds/tablet_twelve</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p><i>There was a queer thrill in the sight of her hair laid out on the barber’s table, once a piece of her and now a commodity. It was both her body and not her body...</i> Revisiting Jo's haircut, this time with ~gender feelings~.</p><p>(Light content warning - depiction of internalized transphobia.)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Theodore Laurence/Josephine March</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>52</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Thistle Garden</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>The internet needs more explicitly trans Jo March content - here's my offering.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>There are some things proper for the ears of young readers, both troubles and triumphs, the little truths that set their feet on safe paths. I have labored to protect my readers from the other sort of truth, which, instead of guiding, confuses and clouds. But my tender audience has quite grown up, and discovered - no doubt - their own cloudy truths. The time is right to tell some of Jo’s. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Let us return, for example, to that frost-blue evening when Jo sold what was her own.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Your hair! Your beautiful hair!" "Oh, Jo, how could you? Your one beauty.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She had promised herself to bear it bravely, like the heroines in her stories. She thought she could do anything to send comfort to her father, to smooth the suffering of the life that had once sheltered hers. It surprised her, then, that her stomach got all twisted up in the telling, and then Mrs. March said:</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“</span>
  <span>But, my dear, it was not necessary, and I'm afraid you will regret it one of these days.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The words stung and then the sting was softened, as her family pressed her for the story and praised her. There was the warm whirl of dinner and those last golden hours of togetherness, which came to them as pleasant dreams come sometimes in dreadful times, inexplicably. But when she had kissed her mother’s cheek and retreated to bed with her sisters, and darkness closed around her, Jo realized she’d been nursing those maternal words like a toothache. “It was not necessary.” She turned it over in her mind; the night was long enough.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Unnecessary</span>
  </em>
  <span>, Jo reasoned resentfully, was quite a different thing than </span>
  <em>
    <span>unhelpful</span>
  </em>
  <span>. “And very little that we do,” she thought, stock still in the darkness, “is truly necessary. If </span>
  <em>
    <span>that</span>
  </em>
  <span> were a reason not to do things…” For a moment she comforted herself with a vision of the home plunged into chaos: “why are the dishes lying about dirty, my dear?” asked the imagined Mrs. March, with customary patience. And the imagined Jo cried with equally customary passion: “It wasn’t </span>
  <em>
    <span>necessary, </span>
  </em>
  <span>Marmee, I feared I might regret it!” This internal outburst warmed her first with righteousness and then with shame. It was wretched to think such thoughts tonight of all nights, after kissing her mother’s worry-worn cheek, the last night for a long time that dear cheek would be offered to her.</span>
</p><p><span>At that age Jo was slow to conquer herself; but once she did, to her credit, she did it honestly and swiftly. Her mother was right, she admitted at once. Her sacrifice had</span> <span>been unnecessary - and she had known it. Even the oil-haired barber had seemed skeptical, shearing off those chestnut locks with pity and a little disapproval. It had been unnecessary but she had wanted it. There was a queer thrill in the sight of her hair laid out on the barber’s table, once a piece of her and now a commodity. It was both her body and not her body, and that feeling startled her because it was familiar.</span></p><p>
  <span>“It was unnecessary,” she thought, “which means I wanted it, which means I acted selfishly.” She could not say (for by this hour, reason was losing ground to desperation) why she had wanted it or why it was selfish, only that she had and it was. And it was just her lot in life, to be selfish in such a stupid way. Didn’t other girls, acting selfishly, at least smooth their own paths with what they won by it? And what had Jo won? Just an ugly head like a sheep’s, a disappointed look from Laurie, and Beth’s sad little remark, “She doesn't look like my Jo anymore.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>How fortunate that few of us can sink so deep into self pity without uttering at least a little moan and how fortunate for Jo that she shared a pillow with Meg. The soft sisterly hand flew at once to Jo’s tearful cheek, and Meg, her voice soft with care but clear with sleeplessness, murmured comforting things. “Isn’t it wicked to cry over my hair, when Papa is ill?” sniffled Jo, and Meg caressed the ragged head with such tenderness that at first Jo didn’t care whether Meg understood her. For Jo felt that Meg did not understand, saying things like, “it will grow back even more splendid, dear.” But after awhile the darkness felt less topsy-turvy and Meg’s caresses slowed and settled, and Jo felt she’d better set things right.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Meg,” she whispered, “I think I wanted to have it cut short like this.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The best good acts are the invisible ones,” preached Meg gently, “but anyone would forgive you for wanting to be seen doing good. Is it that, dear Jo?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Maybe,” said Jo. There was something attractive in wearing a halo of her own self sacrifice, though she did not like that part of herself that thought so. “But I think I wanted it even before all that. Of course I never thought of it,” she clarified. “Girls only do it in desperate times. But maybe… I was glad to come to a desperate time.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Meg was quiet for a moment. Then, “I think it suits you,” she said simply. “My brother Jo.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I wish I could be!” said Jo warmly. “But I cut off my hair and now I feel just… an uglier </span>
  <em>
    <span>Josephine</span>
  </em>
  <span>.” She said the word so rarely, and only to harm herself.</span>
</p><p><span>“Oh, Jo, dear,” said Meg, “you aren’t. Ugly </span><em><span>or </span></em><span>a</span> <span>Josephine. I’m glad,” she added softly, “that we have you here to play brother to us.”</span></p><p>
  <span>And as Jo nestled closer into her sister’s arms, this new word caught at her fresh-opened wound like a thorn. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Play. </span>
  </em>
  <span>“Play brother to us.” For hazily she realized that more and more it did feel like play, that as she slouched and swore like a boy they all smiled knowing smiles at her, waiting for her to bloom out of boyhood into the gentlest womanhood. “I won’t,” she thought, “I won’t, I won’t.” But what would she do? The world has a place for boyish girls, but, “I don’t know what I’ll grow up into,” she mumbled into the blankets. The words “manly woman” flashed so painfully across her mind that she had to bite her own tongue. The darkness had changed, it seemed thicker and uglier, and it was hard to breathe. She wriggled a little, and Meg held her steady. “How brave you were tonight,” Meg whispered, “to cut your hair for Papa.”</span>
</p><p>***</p><p>
  <span>Perhaps my readers hoped for something more sensational, when I promised to spill Jo’s secrets. And yet here I go telling what Jo has, in this faithful history, said all along: “I can't get over my disappointment in not being a boy.” But I think my readers see now that these words only pointed to something else, slippery and nameless. And Jo, who was used to making worlds with her words, saw now that those particular words, spoken aloud, held little power. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The shearing of her hair held little power, either. Unlike the charmed potions that her heroines drank, it did not transform her; she noticed only how comically small her head looked on her shoulders, and though her face was long like a horse’s, how dreadfully round her chin. She did not like to be bothered by such things, especially with her father ill, and decided to take a vacation from looking in mirrors.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Jo, dear, why’s the little looking glass wrapped in a stocking?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I am conquering my vanity,”  muttered Jo, embarrassed. “Don’t anyone tempt me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Meg, what has Jo got to be vain of?” asked Amy, who liked things to be explained to her. “She quite diverted herself of her one beauty.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Divested, dear.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I think,” said Beth softly, “Jo is the most beautiful of all of us, since she gave of herself for Papa.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The others had their burdens too; Meg was quite anxious and couldn’t sleep for days, and Amy got a toothache from the jam they fed her to keep her sweet. Beth suffered inside but was too good to show it, except in the almost imperceptible sighs that escaped her mouth from time to time. Yet no one’s burdens seemed quite like Jo’s, so selfish and so dark. She knew that her heart was a garden that must be tended; the labor of her life was to weed that little plot, lest the brambles choke out the healthful and beautiful plants. And yet it seemed to her that the soil given her to tend was somewhat worse than that of her sisters. Amy, for instance, could neglect her garden for months and find at worst a carpet of spindly dandelions</span>
  <span>. Jo meanwhile battled towering thistles, which scratched the gardener’s face as she labored to cut the fibrous roots. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She wrote of it to Mrs. March.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>My dearest Marmee,</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>All is well and easy at home, except perhaps with me. The children are archangels and Meg gets prettier every day. Sometimes I think I’m in love with her. It would be so much better, wouldn’t it, if we could marry her to me, instead of sending her off to some dreadful stranger? These days it makes me very irritable and sad to think of the future, since it seems more than ever that families are made to be torn apart, and people are born to change whether they wish it or not. Papa once called me the man of the house, and sometimes I wonder whether I would be less miserable if I knew I should grow up into a man. The fact, Marmee, that these days I don’t think I want to grow up into a man or a woman. I am more perfectly happy to remain with my sisters as your loving Jo. I know it’s wicked to waste my thoughts on silly imaginings, for as a rule I never get what I want (as Amy does), and so I’d better work on wanting instead what I will get. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>That reminds me, when I was little I asked Papa once if angels are like people, divided into sexes. And if they were, I wondered if they had the same faults as men and women. Sadly I do not remember what Papa said, since I was in a somewhat topsy-turvy state of mind, as I so often am. When he is well enough - send him all my devoted love, and don’t trouble him with these trifling worries of mine - I will ask him again. Since we are always striving to be angelic it would help to know if we must strive to be like women angels, or if there is another way about it….</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Mrs. March replied with generous maternal spirit: </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>While it is lovely to think of you marrying our Meg and keeping her home, you might in doing so relinquish a chance at one of life's greatest gifts. My fondest wish for all my daughters is to see you find the happiness that I have found in your father and in you girls. But I admit that not all women's happiness comes in the same form, and if any of you should spend her life unmarried, your father and I will thank God for the blessing of a daughter to stay by our side. While I don't wish presently to trouble your poor father with the question of the angels, I myself would guess that they resemble all living things in God's kingdom in being divided into two sexes. But being closer to God, I think these female angels less likely to succumb to the follies of their sex, and more likely to shine with its virtues... </span>
  </em>
</p><p>***</p><p>
  <span>Though her cropped head felt light as feathers, Jo felt heavy in this time, with her worries (selfless and selfish alike) pooling in her belly like lead. Her one consolation was to skate on the river with Laurie. She thought it was the ice that made her feel weightless, but it must be Laurie’s presence, too. She saw the difference when one Saturday Amy begged her as a chaperone to the ice. Jo felt as stiff as a grandmother and could only skate mopey circles until Amy  pouted, “I feel quite dissipated in you,” and Jo could only mutter, “Disappointed, Amy.” She added stormily to herself, “I’m disappointed in the world, why should it not be disappointed in me?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>But Laurie rarely seemed disappointed in her, except perhaps that first glance at his friend’s ragged head, which she could not forget. She did forgive him, though, once they’d had it out: “It makes me cross, Teddy, to see you looking mournfully at my lost wig, when you have every power to grow your own, if it pleases you.” “But,” Laurie cried comically, “if I grow my own maiden locks how can I look at them, without staring in the mirror all day? I need yours, Jo, to keep beauty close without being vain.” She snapped that he should look at little Amy’s curls if he liked beauty, and he retorted that Amy, though dear, was not Jo and never would be. Somehow then they were tussling on the ice, slipping and pushing and laughing, as harmless as kittens, and Laurie cried, “to the devil with your beauty anyway!” Sounds sparkled in the cold, their jagged breath and their skates cutting the ice. In her eyes swirled the white winter sky and the scarlet flush of her boy’s cheeks and his lips gone blue with cold, and Jo thought suddenly, “as long as I have my skates in this life and my Teddy, I will be happy.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They found themselves collapsed on the snowbank, Jo with an arm slung over Laurie to warm him. His teeth were chattering but he was laughing. Jo was not cold; she felt strong and peaceful, and the weight of her friend at her side calmed her. “I’ve been so cross these days,” she complained, “I’ve felt like a thunderstorm in winter.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well you’ve had it out on me now,” said Laurie, rubbing his jaw as if bruised. “I hope you feel better.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I do,” she exclaimed. And then, “but I don’t.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That’s our Jo, all rain and sunshine!” More quietly Laurie said: “Your father will come home safe and sound, just wait and see.” He glanced at her, penitent. “And see if that mane of yours doesn’t buy him the warmest coat a man could own. He’ll never catch cold again in his life.”</span>
</p><p><span>Jo took her arm away from him; his teeth were no longer chattering, and she wanted to see his face. “Teddy, I’ve learned I’m a very selfish person.”</span><span><br/>
</span> <span>He laughed outright. “That’s not your way and everyone knows it.”</span></p><p>
  <span>“It is,” insisted Jo. “I am thinking all the time about myself. The girls - ” she waved her hand helplessly in the air. “They think and pray about our Papa all the time, and I do too. But on top of all </span>
  <em>
    <span>that</span>
  </em>
  <span> worrying I go on worrying about myself.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Of course you do!” he said warmly. “Jo, that’s right of you, to look after yourself! I’ll never understand this guilt of yours. This a problem unique to you Marches. You think that feeding the hungry means you cannot feed yourself.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You might think so if you were poor like us,” she said.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Laurie was abashed but went on with it. “It may be so with - Christmas breakfasts, and things of that sort - but you won’t convince me it’s like that with our souls. I don’t think we can do good to others without first taking care of ourselves.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“But that’s just it,” cried Jo in a passion. “There’s more to taking care of yourself than - </span>
  <em>
    <span>gratifying</span>
  </em>
  <span> yourself. I want to take care of myself, Teddy, truly. I want to make things right inside of me. There’s a - ” She felt as incoherent as a babbling infant - “a garden for me to take care of - only it’s full of thorns - ”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He was looking at her, tenderly but a little tense. “What is it Jo? Isn’t there something? Out with it, will you?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She took a sharp breath. “I don’t ever want to be a woman.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Laurie nodded. He just kept looking at her, with that same earnest mix of love and anxiety. She tried not to look away, tried hungrily to read his face, but was too flustered to make any sense of what she saw. After a moment Laurie looked down, leaned his shoulder against hers, said quietly, “Jo, what </span>
  <em>
    <span>do</span>
  </em>
  <span> you want to be?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’d like,” she said, and couldn’t speak. He butted her again gently with his shoulder, and this time it must have knocked the words right out. “I’d like to have a great bushy beard!” Jo cried, before the power of speech could desert her again. “No, that isn’t true, I’d want a face that grows a beard, but I’d keep it shaved close. And only alone in bed in the morning I’d run my hand over my own cheek. Or maybe when I took a little boy on my knee  - because I’d keep a gaggle of little boys about me, orphans maybe - when I took one on my knee, I’d let him reach up and touch my stubble. I’d play mother and father to the boys all at once. You’d be there too, Teddy,” she said, glowing, “and when the boys got to be a handful we’d leave them with someone sensible like Meg, and run off to Europe so I could get ideas for my stories. We’d go to all the great parties and scandalize the Frenchmen with our dancing. I'd grow my hair long and my beard too and you'd help me put ribbons in both. It would be just like the night we met, when we stomped around in that hallway to hide my scorched dress. Only this time we’d go swinging through the middle of everything, no Meg around to tell us what to do - ”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I like it, Jo,” said Laurie simply. “I would be there with you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And for a moment they each believed in that castle in the air.</span>
</p>
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